How do I lower printing quality in Mac?

[Gary King]

This is my current setup, if it helps.

Printer > Windows ME > wireless router > Mac (via AirPort)

So that is how I connect to my printer. Does it change anything?

I don't really want to unplug my printer if I don't have to. I don't see how it would help in my situation, anyways. Also, some of my other PCs have printer settings, and I am unsure if they will be reset.

 

[Makosuke]

I'm pretty sure that the issue here is as simple as that HP doesn't provide quality settings for this particular printer in their Mac driver. Considering that it's a 5 year old printer and that HP is known for bad Mac drivers, this doesn't really surprise me.

You can hope that they'll add the feature in a future driver update (thought that's unlikely), otherwise the only other thing to try (short of buying a new printer) is the Gimp Print driver; try it instead of HP's and there's at least a chance that it'll support quality settings even though HP doesn't.

Worth a try, anyway.

 

[Gary King]

I've tried installing the GIMP printer drivers, to no avail.

 

[Gary King]

Bump, I still have this problem. It is the only thing bugging me about my OS X Besides this, everything else is fine

 

[Gary King]

If I installed the correct drivers for 932C, shouldn't it show up in my printer list? But it doesn't. The GIMP ones do, though.

 

[Macky-Mac]

This is my current setup, if it helps.

Printer > Windows ME > wireless router > Mac (via AirPort)

So that is how I connect to my printer. Does it change anything?

I don't really want to unplug my printer if I don't have to. I don't see how it would help in my situation, anyways. Also, some of my other PCs have printer settings, and I am unsure if they will be reset.

so have you tried the experiment of connecting the printer directly to the Mac?? just to see what happens???

 

[Gary King]

so have you tried the experiment of connecting the printer directly to the Mac?? just to see what happens???

Well, printing works fine if I directly connect. I get all the options including Draft mode.

 

[Artful Dodger]

What do you have this set at from your windows machine for the default?
Might be in there but just a guess after reading this post(s) I had a HP 900 something and it never worked right with my iMac or eMac.

 

[Macky-Mac]

Well, printing works fine if I directly connect. I get all the options including Draft mode.

so it seems that your Mac has the right driver and uses it when it's connected directly? But when it looks on the network and finds the printer it seems to select a different driver

When you print directly from your Mac and all is working correctly, what's the name of the printer that's displayed for printing? Is it still just Hp? or is it different when using the Mac?

 

[Macky-Mac]

This is my current setup, if it helps.

Printer > Windows ME > wireless router > Mac (via AirPort)

So that is how I connect to my printer. Does it change anything?

I don't really want to unplug my printer if I don't have to. I don't see how it would help in my situation, anyways. Also, some of my other PCs have printer settings, and I am unsure if they will be reset.

maybe the Mac is unable to correctly indentify the model of the printer when it's looking over the network.....and so it's defaulting to a more generic HP driver as a result

I dunno nuthin about Windows ME....is there anyway to change the printer's identification on Windows so that it includes the model number???

 

[Gary King]

This is the current situation.

I tried installing the HP Deskjet 932C drivers for Mac from the HP website, but it still does not show up as one of my printer model options.

When I directly connect the printer to my Mac, it shows 'HP Deskjet 930 series' I believe. The problem is that I don't even have the option to select the 930 series on my Mac!

 

[allegrocm]

We have an HP printer too. We had all sorts of print options with Panther, but when I installed Tiger, I could no longer change print quality settings, including printing in B&W.

Ken

 

[Gary King]

We have an HP printer too. We had all sorts of print options with Panther, but when I installed Tiger, I could no longer change print quality settings, including printing in B&W.

Ken

Did you ever manage to solve this problem? Or did you just get a new printer or something?

 

[Gary King]

Do you think a print server will solve my problem?

 

[GodBless]

Do you think a print server will solve my problem?

I've never been able to get a printer working from Windows '98 to Mac OS X. I tried everything with and without a print server. I've tried to find a print server that will work but it seems like there is nothing that will translate PC to Mac. Good job though Gary King since you were able to find a way to make a Windows ME printer at least show up on OS X. I am not sure if this is possible with Windows '98 but if it is then it really would be cool if somebody told me how to do it.

By the way, do you have the proper Windows driver installed on your HP printer? If not then this is obviously the source of the problem. Also, since the Mac detects the printer properly if you plug it in normally then you need to do some configuring with your Windows machine in order to make it work because the Mac configuration isn't the problem.

 

[Gary King]

I've never been able to get a printer working from Windows '98 to Mac OS X. I tried everything with and without a print server. I've tried to find a print server that will work but it seems like there is nothing that will translate PC to Mac. Good job though Gary King since you were able to find a way to make a Windows ME printer at least show up on OS X. I am not sure if this is possible with Windows '98 but if it is then it really would be cool if somebody told me how to do it.

By the way, do you have the proper Windows driver installed on your HP printer? If not then this is obviously the source of the problem. Also, since the Mac detects the printer properly if you plug it in normally then you need to do some configuring with your Windows machine in order to make it work because the Mac configuration isn't the problem.

I've installed the latest printer drivers for my WinME. Also, when I unplug and plug back in my printer into WinME, it works fine again. I'm using the USB 1.1 port for it.

 

[Gary King]

Hi, I still have this problem.

Is there a way to force the Quality & Media dropdown even though my Mac doesn't think it belongs there?

 

[tshoaf]

Solved

I posted this in another thread of similar topic earlier...

I struggled with this for half an hour, before looking here, found no answer, looked again, and felt like an IDIOT...

Yes I'm using leopard.

When you click print and the dialogue box shows up, next to the printer theres a little down arrow, slightly misleading at looks as if the menu is already expanded... contrarily... it actually is not. Click said arrow and the menu will expand.

Located between the orientation icons and the radio button for Print header and footer, you will see a selection box, click the arrow and select Paper Type / Quality and then select your options for printer speed etc. All of the options for printing are contained within the options selectable from the dropped menu.

PB G4 OS Version 10.5.2 1.67 GHz PPC G4 1.5 GB DDR SDRAM 160 GB Hitachi PATA

 

[Wayne s]

I posted this in another thread of similar topic earlier...

I struggled with this for half an hour, before looking here, found no answer, looked again, and felt like an IDIOT...

Yes I'm using leopard.

When you click print and the dialogue box shows up, next to the printer theres a little down arrow, slightly misleading at looks as if the menu is already expanded... contrarily... it actually is not. Click said arrow and the menu will expand.

Located between the orientation icons and the radio button for Print header and footer, you will see a selection box, click the arrow and select Paper Type / Quality and then select your options for printer speed etc. All of the options for printing are contained within the options selectable from the dropped menu.

PB G4 OS Version 10.5.2 1.67 GHz PPC G4 1.5 GB DDR SDRAM 160 GB Hitachi PATA

That works on my old HP Deskjet 930c. You have made me happy today

 

[medran]

i hate to bump this post just to rant, but I ran into this issue as well, sometimes I feel mac would be a better OS with some text instead of icons. When I saw that triangle I could swear it would mean to pull down the list of printers. That dialog would be better served with a "details" or "quality" text button.

 

[matthaus]

I had the same problem...but solved it.

I had the same issue, and there seemed to be no way to change the default behavior, and it got annoying to constantly tell it to print in grayscale instead of color.
The solution, to change print defaults, is to go into the CUPS web interface. The default settings can be changed there. To do this:
- open a web browser and go to http://localhost:631 (the CUPS port on your machine)
- click the printers tab at the top right
- select the printer you want to change the defaults for
- near the top, under the printer name, use the second drop down menu and select 'Set Default Options'
- here, for me, under General, there are options for Print Quality (mentioned earlier in this thread) and Color Model (useful for me to set the default to grayscale). Change the options as you want them to be by default.
- click the button labeled 'set default options' (you may need to authenticate using your login and password, or you may need to be an administrator)
- done

I hope that helps someone else with this problem. I don't know why these options aren't in the Print & Fax menu in System Preferences. It seems less than ideal to hide them away in the CUPS section.

 

[Gary King]

I had the same issue, and there seemed to be no way to change the default behavior, and it got annoying to constantly tell it to print in grayscale instead of color.
The solution, to change print defaults, is to go into the CUPS web interface. The default settings can be changed there. To do this:
- open a web browser and go to http://localhost:631 (the CUPS port on your machine)
- click the printers tab at the top right
- select the printer you want to change the defaults for
- near the top, under the printer name, use the second drop down menu and select 'Set Default Options'
- here, for me, under General, there are options for Print Quality (mentioned earlier in this thread) and Color Model (useful for me to set the default to grayscale). Change the options as you want them to be by default.
- click the button labeled 'set default options' (you may need to authenticate using your login and password, or you may need to be an administrator)
- done

I hope that helps someone else with this problem. I don't know why these options aren't in the Print & Fax menu in System Preferences. It seems less than ideal to hide them away in the CUPS section.

That doesn't help because it just makes printed images more pixelated, but it still uses the same amount of ink. I'd like to use Draft mode to save ink and to speed up printing, but using Draft mode in CUPS does not do this.

 

[gshank]

If you're in Safari, select "File" then "Print" from the menubar. If you just see the "Printer" and "Presets" options, select the downarrow to the right of the printer combobox which will expand to the full printer options. You should now see a preview of your document on the left and on the right side, you should have:
Printer:
Presets:
Copies:
Pages:
Paper Size:
Orientation:

Under Orientation, there should be another combobox with the following options:
Safari
Layout
Color Matching
Paper Handling
Cover Page
Scheduler
Printer Features
Summary

Select "Printer Features" and now you can change the "Print Quality" to Draft.
I would recommend going up to "Presets" and selecting "Save As", name it Draft, and now you have "Standard" for "better" printing and "Draft" for draft mode.